Cannot Setup Airport Time Capsule as Router

[Luthersnewboots]

Hi everyone, I need some help setting up my airport time capsule as a router.
We just moved into new offices and the internet is sent into our room via ethernet.
The IT guy came and set it up for us on a TP-Link Router and i want to change this router out and use my Time Capsule as the router instead.
However I cannot for the life of me set it up.
I have previously set up an Airport Extreme on my home network where I had the username and password e.t.c
However on this occasion the IT guy gave me the settings of:

IP - 185.***.***.**
Subnet 255.255.***.***
Gateway 185.201.***.**
DNS 8.8.8.8 8.8*.*

I have no idea of what I need to do to set up this kind of internet connection...hoping someone can kindly walk me through it?

Much appreciated

Davin

 

[Mikael H]

Hi everyone, I need some help setting up my airport time capsule as a router.
We just moved into new offices and the internet is sent into our room via ethernet.
The IT guy came and set it up for us on a TP-Link Router and i want to change this router out and use my Time Capsule as the router instead.
However I cannot for the life of me set it up.
I have previously set up an Airport Extreme on my home network where I had the username and password e.t.c
However on this occasion the IT guy gave me the settings of:

IP - 185.***.***.**
Subnet 255.255.***.***
Gateway 185.201.***.**
DNS 8.8.8.8 8.8*.*

I have no idea of what I need to do to set up this kind of internet connection...hoping someone can kindly walk me through it?

Much appreciated

Davin

If you're in a business environment, I guess you've already got capable routers/firewalls in front of your network? In that case, your Time Capsule should be put in "Router Mode: Off (Bridged mode)". Since you were allowed to install and use your own gear (because you were, right?), I guess nobody cares about centralized network security in your company, so Wireless network mode should probably be "Create a wireless network", with Wireless Security as WPA2 Personal, with a nice and good passphrase.
For ease of installation, you may be able to "Connect using DHCP"; then your Time Capsule should inherit all relevant settings from its parent network. Otherwise, put it in Static mode and set addresses as per your list above.

 

[Luthersnewboots]

If you're in a business environment, I guess you've already got capable routers/firewalls in front of your network? In that case, your Time Capsule should be put in "Router Mode: Off (Bridged mode)". Since you were allowed to install and use your own gear (because you were, right?), I guess nobody cares about centralized network security in your company, so Wireless network mode should probably be "Create a wireless network", with Wireless Security as WPA2 Personal, with a nice and good passphrase.
For ease of installation, you may be able to "Connect using DHCP"; then your Time Capsule should inherit all relevant settings from its parent network. Otherwise, put it in Static mode and set addresses as per your list above.

Thanks. I am pretty sure last time I tried to change the IP address it came up with an error that it conflicted with the router address.

But I will try later.

 

[Mikael H]

Thanks. I am pretty sure last time I tried to change the IP address it came up with an error that it conflicted with the router address.

But I will try later.

Yep; that’s one of the reasons to run DHCP if you don’t have all information on the network.

 

[Luthersnewboots]

Yep; that’s one of the reasons to run DHCP if you don’t have all information on the network.

Okay. But are you saying that this compromises security?

 

[Mikael H]

Okay. But are you saying that this compromises security?

It depends on the baseline you have for security. The Airport Extreme isn’t inherently less secure than other consumer-grade pieces of network hardware and quite probably more secure than most cheap stuff out there.
I’m more worried about the IT guys not caring more about what devices get installed and how.

In case you mean from another angle: Using DHCP for network configuration by itself does not compromise security in general terms. DHCP is simply a protocol that allows a central server to assign known network configurations to devices, and to keep tabs on which network address corresponds to which physical device. One benefit from this is that you have a low risk of address collisions: A DHCP server will try to automatically make sure that two devices don’t get the same address.

When it comes to getting address collisions when manually configuring network settings, just increment the last number in the address by one until you no longer collide (if the address is on the form a.b.c.x, the number corresponding to x is what you want to increment). On the other hand, the IT guys should have good enough documentation to be able to give you a known good address from the start, and they should update their documentation to include the new device they allowed on the network.


Note that your security situation probably isn’t much worse than it is for a whole bunch of small businesses out there. However my philosophy in such matters is that if you can’t be really good, you should at least be a tougher target to crack than your competition.

 

[Luthersnewboots]

Okay. So I plugged in my time capsule to check out of this would work and it didn't. No internet connection.
The it guy did give me a specific up address, I wonder if I do indeed need to use that one and not dhcp?
I am planning on taking my airport extreme in tomorrow, maybe that will work?

If you're in a business environment, I guess you've already got capable routers/firewalls in front of your network? In that case, your Time Capsule should be put in "Router Mode: Off (Bridged mode)". Since you were allowed to install and use your own gear (because you were, right?), I guess nobody cares about centralized network security in your company, so Wireless network mode should probably be "Create a wireless network", with Wireless Security as WPA2 Personal, with a nice and good passphrase.
For ease of installation, you may be able to "Connect using DHCP"; then your Time Capsule should inherit all relevant settings from its parent network. Otherwise, put it in Static mode and set addresses as per your list above.

e

 

[Mikael H]

Okay. So I plugged in my time capsule to check out of this would work and it didn't. No internet connection.
The it guy did give me a specific up address, I wonder if I do indeed need to use that one and not dhcp?
I am planning on taking my airport extreme in tomorrow, maybe that will work?

If you got a specific address then that's what you should use. The address collision may have been due to the address you got being identical to the address of the existing router. In other words you may need to turn off the old router before connecting your Time Capsule.
The setup process for an AirPort and for a Time Capsule should be identical, so if you can't get one working the other one shouldn't work either.